


The Damsel and the Dragon

by foundCarcosa



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-02
Updated: 2011-11-02
Packaged: 2017-10-25 15:39:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/271953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A trial by fire to tame the savage beasts within. A young nation makes her mark on WWII Germany. [Written 27 May 2011]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Damsel and the Dragon

He’d picked her up and swung her around in the first years, the years before now, though he wasn’t much bigger than her. Gilbert had been the biggest then, and he’d reclined in the chaise, watching them with shrewd russet eyes. He’d swung her around, and she’d squealed and laughed and thrown her arms about his neck. He was _groß Bruder Ludwig_ , for once, and of this he’d been fiercely proud.

It isn’t _groß Bruder Ludwig_ that Lili Zwingli sees now, her hands primly folded in front of her as she watches the war progress from her caged-bird window. She doesn’t see him at all, the view much too narrow, but her imagination works wonders on the undisturbed landscape before her.  
The radio crackles with news, and the rapid-fire words come to life in front of her unblinking blue eyes.  
Panzers and Katyushas, and acrid, nostril-scorching air rife with artillery-fire dust. The mouths of Fritzes and Ivans cranked open in feral, desperate cries. For motherland, for fatherland.

Ludwig would be one of those Fritzes. And she knows this the way she knew Roderich would let her go, the way she knew Vash would bow under her weight, the way she knows that one day, with clenched fist and set jaw, she’ll be rid of all of them.  
— _She loves Vash. She doesn’t love living with Vash._  
She can _see_ Ludwig, blazing eyes, gaunt face. Shoulders broad and squared under the weight of a nation doomed.

She breathes his name against the window, and her breath blooms frosty over its surface. She’d find him. _Kleine Lili_ would find him, and _Kleine Lili_ would be his _Licht_ , as she’d always been.

-x-

Ludwig first sees her, a fleeting image in wine-coloured dress and blonde plaits, in a dank alley, and he _knows_ he is hallucinating because no girl of that sort would be here. The whores and forsaken housewives they met were always drably dressed and interchangeable, figures with no life, bodies with no souls.

He didn’t remember them. But a wine-coloured dress and blonde plaits… he remembers.  
And he remembers a small girl, slender and graceful, who would one day be a Woman, a Lady, a fine nation in her own right.  
But that isn’t her, in that alley, in this city. She wouldn’t be here.

-x-

“Ludwig,” she whispers, but not against a cold pane of glass or the placid surface of a puddle this time. This time, she whispers it in the stillness of night, and the syllables slip between the detritus of war to reach keen ears.

Ludwig’s fingers tighten around the cigarette trapped between them, nearly crushing it. “Who goes—?”

“Turn around.”

And because a bullet in the front is better than one in the back, Ludwig spins, his eyes like searchlights, picking out the delicately-formed figure from the shadows. The wine-coloured dress. The blonde plaits. Ludwig shakes his head, but she’s already stepping out into plain view, and oh…

“You shouldn’t be here.” Perfunctory words from dry lips.

“No,” Lili Zwingli agrees, and had that shrewd, cunning intelligence always been there, in those large, bewitching eyes?  
Had he always called them ‘bewitching’?

“You’ve grown,” and she knows, she knows because she carries her weight like a dancer but her hips undulate like one of Sadik’s dancers, and her lips purse prettily so the gloss upon them gleams, and Ludwig fumbles for his cigarette but he’s already lost it. It fizzles out on the damp cobblestones between his feet.

“You’ve changed,” and he knows, he knows because he feels the ebbing of power in his limbs, the digging of his belt buckle into his empty abdomen, he grinds his teeth and leaps at the slightest provocation, his life belongs to his Führer and he shoots when he sees Red and he no longer recalls the pleasures of a sunny, lazy afternoon or a simple embrace from hands devoid of knives.

“Come with me.”  
And Ludwig goes, because Ludwig recognises an order when he hears one — regardless of whence it came.

-x-

The four-poster is impeccably made and there is a basin filled with cool water on the night-stand and “No, I cannot, I must—” but Lili has already taken his coat and hat and is watching him expectantly. She knows he won’t leave. She knows him.

“The Axis doesn’t make its next advance until a few days hence,” she repeats from a memory that transcended the average capacity. “You desert no one by letting me tend to you. Lie down, Ludwig.”

This isn’t _Kleine Lili_ who’d charmed sweets out of him with an innocent bat of her long lashes.  
This is Lady Lili, who’d still charm him, but not innocently… An order from _Kleine Lili_ would have elicited a round of good-natured laughter. An order from Lady Lili, and Ludwig finds that his limbs had already taken him to the bed, and laid him upon it.

Primly she settles herself on the mattress beside him, wringing out a cloth in the basin and daubing his forehead with it. “So much change,” she whispers, as if reading the stories etched in the lines in his face and the furrows in his brow and the set of his jaw.

“Does Vash know you are here?” and that was quite possibly the last question Ludwig should have asked, as she draws herself up with a scowl that wasn’t at all petulant.

“I am not a forgotten child of Vash’s, to be locked up in a bell tower and taught the songs of caged birds,” she whispers harshly, and it is true — he hears no child in this voice, no matter how diminutive she might have appeared. The German’s eyes regard her unblinkingly as she leans forward, golden plaits brushing his shoulders, fire in her eyes. “Is that what you see when you look at me? A child?”

He isn’t given time to answer; she’s dropped the cloth back into the basin and pushed herself off the bed, disappearing into the suite’s washroom. Ludwig pushes himself up to a sitting position, smoothing his hair, righting his collar, remembering the sweet minty scent of her breath and the colour in her cheeks and trying not to.

“Ludwig.” That same whisper he’d heard in the alley, but so much closer now, and with an undercurrent of heat that made his blood rush. He is afraid to look, but he is looking anyway, and _Gott im Himmel_ she shouldn’t be wearing that, and was this the first time he’d seen her hair out of its plaits, and—

“Lili…” But what is he to say, with the silken fabric of the chemise sliding so tantalisingly over her hips as she saunters towards him, rosy mouth pouting under big baby-blues, perked nipples showing under a décolleté collar of lace.

“You need me,” and heat flushes under his skin as if it had no choice but respond to her gospel. “You burn with the fever of war and hatred.” Sweet voice, sultry words, she weaves a spell around him and he doesn’t immediately notice that she’s straddled him, planted her knees on either side of him and placed her small hands on his shoulders, sliding down to stroke the buttons of his shirt. “I do not fight, but that alone doesn’t mean I am neutral…”

Ludwig raises well-meaning hands, to gently push her away, to put some distance between them so he can think, but his hands find small, tempting breasts under silk and Lili purrs a little sound of approval and he’s _lost_ , having forgotten Kleine Lili with her porcelain dolls and baby-girl dresses because Lady Lili is pressing her chest into his hands and brushing soft lips against his and _refusal is not an option_ —

“More,” she murmurs against lips that had parted to allow her entrance.  
 _More_ , and he can feel the heat of her against his groin, and in his groin something awakens, and _refusal is not an option_ …

She bounces on the mattress as he flips her onto it, her thighs spreading to make room for him, golden hair spilling over the mattress like a corona around an angel’s face. Aryan perfection, woman of all Germany’s dreams, flushed and ready, and his fingers can’t unbutton and unzip fast enough and for once he _curses_ the uniform, _curses_ it being in the way— but she’s helping, and he’s free to roam calloused hands over the silk covering her abdomen and chest. He could push the chemise up and away, feast on white flesh, but the satiny texture only heightens his arousal…

He tugs his shirt off and tosses it away, carelessness in the treatment of his garments only emphasising his focused need. Lili coos at the muscle straining under his skin, gasps at his lips at her throat and collarbone and _arches_ , silk stroking against his jaw. When she rose, he pushed down, pressing groin to groin, his teeth nipping at the flesh just above the lacy collar. He hisses at the soft cry she gives, at the way her hands tighten on his arms. More.

He remembers now, remembers something important, and slides down her body to burrow his head under the creamy-coloured garment and press his lips to the inside of her thigh. It quivers, she quivers, and with a firm hand on her belly to hold her there he works his way towards the silky, damp flesh — “L-Ludwig, ach…” — and he shushes her gently with a reassuring squeeze before his tongue touches that silky, damp flesh…  
And of course she cries out in surprise, surprise at the rush of inexplicable pleasure, surprise at the ease and enthusiasm with which Ludwig begins to lick and suck, but the tension melts away and she’s making soft cooing sounds and undulating against him and he leans his head against her thigh as he continues, continues…

He knows when she’s ready for him, her muscles clenching and her sighs becoming pants, the flesh to which Ludwig had been attending showing flushed and slick with her juices and his saliva. With one last open-mouthed kiss he rises, pushing his unzipped trousers off his hips, and when her brimming eyes dart to his face he licks his lips, deliberately, tasting her.

She gasps at the sight of him, painfully hard, veined flesh pulsing as he grips it in his palm. Her arms open for him as he settles in between her thighs, curving around his back, her neck arching to receive the attentions of his lips. He moans as he pushes in, and she tenses, and her fingers dig into him as the pain commences, and this is nothing like what he’d been doing before, _nothing_ …

“Trust me, Kleine Lili,” and she grits her teeth and pushes her hips upward because she’s not Kleine Lili, she’s Lady Lili and Lady Lili is strong, and ready, and _wants_ him even if pain must precede pleasure. And it’s Ludwig’s turn to cry out, the barrier giving way and his length sliding in up to the hilt.

“ _Oh_ ,” she sighs, because _this_ is what it feels like, _this_ is what her body had craved when she slipped careful fingers into herself and bit her pillow to muffle her sounds. This rocking of a much larger body against her, the inexorable friction of his thrusting organ, his breath on her neck and the initial pain melting into a molten-hot pleasure that breaks over her in continuous waves.

He thrusts hard and fast now, and at first she balks and murmurs fearful things, and Ludwig remembers himself and slows, building up to what he needs, building up to a faster rhythm, and by the time his panting grows harsh and his control begins slipping, she’s there with him, nails digging half-moon patterns into his back and legs tightening around him and torso arching to meet his.

His name on her lips, her scent in his nostrils, her inner walls tightening around him, her hips rolling into his, the warmth, _oh Gott im Himmel_ , the _warmth_ —  
 _Tighter, Lili. Hold me tighter, I’m coming and I’m coming hard and I feel you coming too and I don’t know where I end and you begin I think I—_

“Ludwig,” she whispers, and she’s very close now, not like when they met in the alley, or when she awakened his arousal from the bedpost, but _close_ , her thigh thrown over his and her arm angled across his chest so her fingers can stroke his jaw. Close.  
And he’s exhausted, floating between consciousness and unconsciousness, knowing nothing but the pulsing warmth that rested on his thigh and the salty-sweet scent of their union…

She is gone in the morning.

When next he sees her, broken as he was, the casualty of a war that had ravaged a whole continent, she is all Mona-Lisa smile and self-assured carriage, and her girlish plaits had been cut away, and even Vash had to concede to her self-awareness.

And she ignores Ludwig, until the very last moment.  
“Ludwig,” she whispers before departing. Mona-Lisa smile, self-assured carriage.

“You’ve grown,” he croaks through exhausted vocal cords, like reciting a script.  
Her wry laughter is warm, throaty; but behind it is a rueful tone that Ludwig recognises. He hadn’t changed enough; he was no good for her, and the fact that she knew it meant she’d grown much more than he’d thought.

She would have her way: Lady Lili would belong to no one.


End file.
